Like, for instance, that the NDP is weak on economics. Really? It's already been established that provincial NDP governments have the best track records at (least on that "deficit" issue which so many people obsess so witlessly about) among the variants of the three main parties in Canada.
There's more to it though. As I've said numerous times, the policies that have been sold to us by "serious" economists and "serious" political parties HAVE NOT WORKED. Allowing transnationals to sell anywhere, without any responsibilities to the countries they are selling to, has meant the flight of jobs to authoritarian dictatorships where workers' attempts to organize are defeated by state and corporate violence. Workers in the developed countries have been forced to get by on unstable, service-sector employment, which has not enabled them to maintain the levels of consumption needed to buy all the goods now produced in poor country sweat-shops and industrial hell-holes, with those consumers piling on more and more household debt.
Treating workers as an expense to be evaded through off-shoring or automation has produced a hollowed-out economy based on debt, financial fraud, and financial market bubbles.
Cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthiest 5% of income earners has NOT produced surges in job-creating investment. It has, instead, increased economic inequality, which has contributed to the hollowing-out of the economy. This is primarily due to the fall in government revenues and the subsequent slashing of public services and income support programs. (Unemployed public sector workers do not buy a lot of houses or cars. Sick people pushed out of hospitals too soon are not going to contribute in the workforce as quickly. Students broken by high tuitions and later burdened by huge student loan debts don't buy as many houses or cars or what-not either. Poor people, unable to afford rent and groceries do not pay rent of buy groceries. Surprise, surprise.)
It doesn't fucking work. It has failed. It is failing.
Furthermore, given the level of talent occupying the government side of the House of Commons these days (harper, Baird, Clement, Flaherty, Ritz, MacKay, Day, Toews, Ambrose, Oda, Van Loan, Kenney, ad nauseum), I gotta say that I find it rich that anyone is saying the NDP isn't ready to govern.
Look "serious" people: You've had three decades to prove that your neo-liberal, neo-con imperialist fantasies can work, and you've failed. It looks like more and more people have grown unimpressed with your claims and your endorsements. And that looks mighty good indeed.
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2 comments:
I sure hope you're right, thwap.
I had a chat near the beginning of the election with someone who is a keen small business, lower taxes, government waste type voter who supported Shelley Glover this past election. There was no way I would sell Layton or Ignatieff (I totally agreed that the latter was ineffective and insufferable and not even democratically elected to lead his party).
BUT I went on to underscore that the corporate tax rate had been reduced by 40% over the past decade. I marveled at how little was accomplished in terms of job creation and greater prospects for the average person. I also added that income tax cuts paled in comparison, ranging from 5% to 20% depending on family composition. That kind of made her ears perk up.
Beijing York,
Somebody else said that the NDP's surge shows that a lot of people are hurting in Canada.
And in the bubble that the political elites, the wingnut welfare "think-tanks," the newspaper editorial boards, and the television managers live in, none of that registers, it doesn't exist.
The contempt our culture has for the poor and the not-quite-poor and people making around the median income in general is such that we don't even exist for these people, so how can their favoured policies have failed?
If you have become a "loser" due to their elite-driven policies, then you cease to exist in their imaginary world. Thankfully, in the real world, you still have a vote. (That's why harper works so hard to make that vote null and void.)
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